1 Simple Way to Improve Customer Support

Snapping a screenshot isn’t rocket science. Unsurprisingly, it has become an intrinsic part of our daily interactions, and we take for granted this means of communication. However, the question of whether you should use a screen capture when communicating with your customer is anything but trivial. Neither is depicting a problem visually simply a matter of convenience.

There’s a very good reason, in the end, why designers planning processes aiming to solve problems, draw instead of write, or why analysts, extrapolate meaning from data by visualizing it first. Here, at Droplr, we strongly believe that using visuals when talking to customers carries great potential. Hence, we didn’t hesitate long before developing the Droplr Intercom integration.

The Integration

Some of our customers have already seen the integration in action, as we’ve been testing it before the launch. We’ve been supporting users with annotated screenshots and screencasts for over two years with our own Droplr links, but the new integration makes it as simple as drag and drop the screenshots of screen recordings directly from the Droplr app into the message.

It’s life-saving for our users, as we’re able to solve their problems clearly and promptly. We can testify – nothing works better than actually showing the solution to the problem. And nothing will better improve customer support communication.

Take our “kangaroo test” and see for yourself which warning your brain processes faster: 😉

Show me rather than tell. I’m on the run!

You may disagree and think we’re advocating a regression to the time of cave paintings. We see your point and we do agree the words you chose matter. They make your company culture. And, this is why I’m writing to you, hoping you’ve reached this point. 🙏🏽 👏🏽

Take note, however, that we’re inundated with information. According to a study conducted at the University of California, San Diego, only in 2008 Americans consumed 1,080 trillion words outside work only, 100,500 words per person.

We couldn’t get hold of more contemporary data – feel free to share it with us in the comments, if you’re in the know, but given the evolution of digital marketing and media ever since, we can only imagine what the number is now. We’re being bombarded with information nonstop, which makes it even more strenuous for our brain to distill the relevant messages from the irrelevant ones.

How to act like a good teacher when educating your customers? As we’ve already mentioned, here at Droplr, we leverage our tool for customer support purposes, too.

It often happens that after reading a message only we’re unable to tell what the problem is. We serve users worldwide, which entails having to deal with linguistic barriers at times. Or, the users type in the messages in a hurry and in emotions.

To make sure we’re on the same page, we usually ask them to send us a screenshot of the problem or to film it and send us the screencast. You might say it’s cheeky of us as we ask them to invest even more time in the interaction with us. But, in fact, it shortens the whole problem-solving process.

When the users reach out for an explanation, we use the same weaponry. 😉 Usually, a screenshot, annotated if it’s necessary, is enough.

Sometimes, if it’s a path that needs to be explained, we’d create a screencast of us showing them how to achieve their aim.

For example, if a user asked us how to create and share a board. We’d say it’s not a mission impossible and we’d simply send them such a screencast:

You couldn’t be more efficient than that! 😎

As Brian Donohue, Product Manager at Intercom says, “The value of images and screencasts for sales and support teams is a no-brainer. It’s a core part of their workflow when chatting to customers. The key is making the workflow to capture and share those images feel fast and effortless. So much so that you can do it without slowing down a real-time chat. That’s what we think we’ve enabled with the Droplr integration.”

Don’t forget about the smile 😉

Speaking of emojis… Yes. You’ve heard us right. 😁 If you’re 🙄 right now, stop. Their phenomenon is more deeply rooted in our culture than you might think. And, in fact, it’s always been in some way or another part of our communication. As Catherine A. Moore – an illustrator and a professor of art – points out, these tiny icons invented by a Japanese programmer, Shigetaka Kurita have a lot in common with the pictographic symbols used 300 BC!

They have the power to express what words fail to convey. As a matter of fact, emojis help us express emotions our faces would normally express. If you take into account the fact that over facial expressions make 60% of our face-to-face communication, these tiny icons become indispensable if you want to engage with your customers truly. Surely, they add the personal touch you strive for!In fact, Intercom recently took a look at emoji use and analyzed emoji trends abstracted from more than two million anonymized conversations. The findings proved the power of emojis. According to Intercom, messages started by a business that contained an emoji were 4 times more likely to elicit a response from a consumer than those that didn’t!

The report also found consumers used 30% more face emojis in their messages compared to businesses. 83% of consumers emojis were face emojis vs 51% of businesses. Moreover, the report found that emoji use in business messaging quadrupled in 2016. Emojis allow businesses to translate the nonverbal communication we see in face-to-face interaction to the digital world and create personal connections with its customers.

Smart businesses take advantage of these tools. Droplr and Intercom, for sure, do.

Ready to get more communicative?

I'm a service designer and a digital marketer, passionate about human-centered design and storytelling. To my own surprise, I frequently find myself writing about motivation and organizational culture. Why? This could be the human factor at play...